Everyone following the anti-piracy org BREIN and it's lawsuits in NL knows that this judge is corrupt, but it cannot really be proven. BREIN always uses the same judge, they always make it impossible for the defendant to be present at the hearings (as I understand it, but I don't know much about it, they use some loophole to make it impossible for the defendant to defend itself at the moment of the verdict). And he always finds the defendant guilty in these cases, no matter how insane (like the 'links case' Falkvinge discussed, were even showing the name of a movie in the forum was considered 'illegal linking').

This should get more press, but not enough people care in NL I think as this is only dredged up as 'wow how can this be' in tech forums while it's usually only a footnote in other press. And I don't believe that's a conspiracy, but rather that, no-one cares...

There has been some uproar about this on (Dutch) internet sites, however I haven't seen anything about it in mainstream media.

On a related note, just today a small ISP that needed to block TPB has refused to do it and they are now sued by BREIN (http://tweakers.net/nieuws/81929/brein-daagt-zeelandnet-om-t...). The trail will start in June and is expected to last several months. I just hope this time maybe more uproar will ensue if the same judge is doing the case again.

There is so much unproven bullshit and downright deception in that article that this is the first thread I've flagged in a year and a half.

1st. No one has been charged, tried, and found corrupt.

2nd. Was this association before, during, or after the court case? There really is a difference between those three.

3rd. What is this "association"? The judge's name is part of the lower category with a dozen other names. Does this mean he's in the same building?

4th. Even this article is starting to claim (in edit/update, forced by a commenter) that this "commercial" course was some type of an official bar course where the two parties were perhaps picked by the bar (as in, they didn't pick each other).

5th. The article keeps on mentioning that this judge ruled "file names" to be illigal. Right, because taking the URL and breaking it appart before posting it on a warez site clearly turns everything around and makes the forum a place for a purfectly legitimate discussion of "file names". The author seems to be outraged by this.

If that is indeed the same judge working together with the plaintif, then it does still not proof corruption. But taking the case would have been highly unethical. I really hope there will be an investigation into this.

To my (USA) mind, this seems like Enemy action, or a multi-national conspiracy. In the USA, judges with this kind of appearance of bias would most like recuse themselves, and if they didn't, one side or the other would try to set up the whole case for an appeal later, and then appeal later with flags waving and horns honking.

Why does this appearance of judicial bias occur so often in connection with The Pirate Bay?

This statement would be needed if anyone thought HN was an example of good design and usability, I don't think I've ever seen a comment here claim that, it seems everyone acknowledges that HN was built to work (as in, do the very minimum it can to exist) and nothing more. The lack of polish with HN is part of the charm really.

I'm enamored with the idea of writing desktop applications with web technologies, but I'm not enamored with the idea of running a node.js instance locally for every such desktop application.

What I would like to see is a "privileged mode" Chromium (or Firefox) that would let applications break out of the browser sandbox and directly perform operations such as filesystem I/O. Privileged Mode Chromium would obviously be a huge security threat if it's allowed to run any old code, so it would be wise to prevent it from downloading and executing scripts over the network, or maybe have some kind of script signing support in place so that the only scripts allowed to execute are the ones with the app developers' signature on them. Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass here and what we have right now works just fine. Feel free to correct me here.

Also, one question. Isn't the node.js instance serving my application visible to other applications on the same system? Can't a malicious application take advantage of this fact and cause my app to misbehave?

(Offtopic: I must point out an irritating and potentially harmful design trend that is emerging as a result of Twitter Bootstrap's popularity: the top navigation bar that stays in place as you scroll downward. It wastes precious screen space, looks ugly and doesn't add anything of value to the website. Why is it so important that I be forced to look at your website's logo and navigation bar all the time? I'm not picking on the AppJS developers here; this is a general sentiment directed towards all the designers who embrace this terrible trend.)

Despite all my efforts there are edge cases where it simply won't install/build.

Keep up the good work though -- this is a much needed project. (Bear in mind too that Mozilla and other companies are coming out with their own runtimes for web apps, so such projects will likely be rendered obsolete by them).

This looks really cool, but for HTML5 games to work well it really could do with these things:

1) support for hardware-accelerated rendering with canvas2D

2) support for hardware-accelerated WebGL

3) ability to turn off the extremely restrictive driver blacklists in Chrome (which will turn off hardware acceleration for ~50% of users, and is not necessary if building a desktop app)

Yeah, basically games really need hardware acceleration. I know they don't mention games at all but something like this is great for additional distribution platforms and monetisation, as long as it has hardware acceleration. Anyone know if it covers that?

Another interesting idea would be to ditch Node all-together and use HTML5/CSS3 literally for everything your desktop app needs. With localStorage and other APIs being implemented in Chromium, one does not need the server part anymore.

I'm co-editor for a niche news site (http://pokerfuse.com) and we strictly do not write any headlines in the "is...?" format. It's a good check before publishing anything - if your headline naturally falls in to this format, it should be a signal that either (a) we shouldn't be writing this story, (b) we should stand by our convictions and write the headline in the affirmative, (c) the story needs more research before publishing. We pass up on some easy pageviews, but we see the upside in more loyal/repeat visitors.

A question headline attracts the reader to read the sub-headline. And that is the purpose of headlines (and copy). To get people to read smoothly until they take out the CC and buy.

Problem is that if you overuse it in a blog (for example), then your writing style will end up souding like an infomercial.Mind you, if you see yourself using linkbait to gain eyeballs, then your blog is just not worth reading (or advertising in).

"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent"

Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participation level would be 0%.

I enjoyed the story, but something bothers me (just a little bit). I don't like his attempts at sensationalizing the event:

> The protesters were surprised, I think, that my subject was interestingto them. At one point they all applauded spontaneously when I describeda feature of the system.

Rob Pike is a renown scientist, at the time working on Plan9 , the most exciting project of the moment. He tried to portray the protesters as mindless sheep blindly following rms, where indeed they were smart people genuinely against the idea of software patents. After all, this is MIT we're talking about, is anyone surprised that these guys actually showed interest in Rob's talk?

I know that if I were there, I would've definitely put up a protest sign, while still being thrilled to attend the talk.

Software patents are bad, okay?He got into them before that became obvious.Now it is. He is too stubborn or too blind to state this truth; instead he hides behind "business community is still excited".

Stallman organizing protest can not be more wrong than Pike not acknowledging the problem.

I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair?

I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious as backing store.

> I was congratulated warmly and people were excited about the future of software patents. Nowadays, however, the climate in universities at least is very different, and Richard Stallman is almost single-handedly responsible for the change. (The business community, on the other hand, is still excited.)

Seems to me that the protestors furthered their cause very well. By being peaceful, respectful and non-violent they showed that they were not just mindless drones - they were thoughtful folk of a technical persuasion.

Software patents are bad for everyone. Even those who have patents get sued routinely by those who have other patents. Thy mus file patents as "defensive patents", even if they have no intention of using them. The whole situation is predicated on greed and stifles research and innovation. The only folk who makebny real gain out it are lawyers.

What's more interesting is that he got HBO to release their content in a DRM-free format. (HBO is the network that previously wouldn't let you buy their online video service unless you already had cable and an HBO subscription, rather defeating the purpose of buying the content online.)

None of these are syntax. `printf` in C or scala/groovy is a function call, which relates to the language's API, the C++ use of streams is an API decision, Java being funky is due to its API (and its semantics to a lesser extent). The only language I can think of off the top of my head where print would be syntax would be python, and even then 1) that's only for versions <=2, and 2) the formatting would still be an API choice.

This is a very specific selection. There are plenty of modern languages that don't use printf semantics or C-like syntax. Too, there's languages from the 80s and 90s that did: Python (1991), R (1993), and PHP (1995) come to mind for direct printf analogs.

Using Scala and co only brings you a part of the way, especially if you have to interact with Javaesque APIs like in Android, where you have dozens of different abstract classes (or sometimes interfaces) begging for anonymous inner classes.

The man wrote git for use on the Linux kernel. Trying to argue with him about how to use git with respect to your tiny patch to the Linux kernel seems... like missing the point on a great many things. The rules for submitting kernel patches are laid out in great detail. Do you really thing arguing with the gatekeeper is going to change anything?

I don't understand why people are upset with Linus's writing style. I considered what he wrote to be quite polite. He was merely stating his standards in terms of what he would and wouldn't accept (and github pull requests are on the "won't accept" list). He even explained why he wouldn't accept it.

Furthermore, the patch was deficient in other ways. (a) it was missing the Signed-off-by: header, and (b) it should have been sent to the linux-bluetooth mailing list or one of the Bluetooth maintainers, with the linux-bluetooth mailing list cc'ed.

I don't mean to be overly critical, but is it just me or are the 'godfathers' of computer science starting to sound like cranky old men?

I mean....ok....this pull request being inferior to the way HE (the creator of Git) imagined it (or implemented it) is a bit petty imho.

What's with the complaining? I am sure this is not the first time I have heard him complaining about something on Github or some other 'new technology'. The same goes with Crockford and his semi-colon.

Edit: Although, I must confess that it is annoying when the creators of a service that you use totally blow off your suggestions (esp. when that service is built on your own creation).....so I am torn on this one. Still has the 'annoying old man complaining feel' to it though.

Linus does not hesitate to criticize and always think about things before declaring them cool.

Oh he makes errors like everybody. He's usually not always very nice in messages (read LKML and you'll understand). But he's usually right and he's usually not writing random things because "it is trendy".

So GitHub is trendy. Linus doesn't care. Linus cares for the good features and pull isn't one of them in his eyes. And then again, I think he's right. Pull in GitHub is crappy.

But what's missing from his message is the reason why the GitHub pull is crappy. I'm sure he knows, but he's using half words. Here's the reason:

If GitHub enforced proper pull messages PEOPLE WOULDN'T USE IT. Why? Because it's the easyness to fork and pull that make GitHub successful. So you see, pulls have to be DEAD EASY. And that means also "single text field, no enforcement of anything".

So yeah. GitHub won't fix it, because it'll be bad for their business.

Man, now I feel like a total hack. I love the github pull request. I do insist that my devs use a good style (i.e. first line is a summary and wrap at 80 chars) but I love the user interface for looking at diffs and doing a code review. I had no idea it was inferior until reading this and now I find myself in the awkward position that I don't care. Have I really become the guy who values an efficient team process more that adherence to esoteric specifications. God, I can't believe it's come to that.

Also, please write good git commit messages. A good commit messagelooks like this:

Header line: explaining the commit in one line

Body of commit message is a few lines of text, explaining things in more detail, possibly giving some background about the issue being fixed, etc etc.

The body of the commit message can be several paragraphs, and please do proper word-wrap and keep columns shorter than about 74 characters or so. That way "git log" will show things nicely even when it's indented.

I also do not care for the pull requests, for much the same reasons. I like there is a way to bring a branch to a maintainer's attention and updating its commit range in event of updates before it is accepted, but the way messages that result from merging in the code is irritating, so I end up just using "git pull" to do the trick once the branch looks good to me.

I get the point he's trying to make and completely agree with it, but the way he presented his issues just made me lose respect for him a little bit ... I just wish someone that respected was able to present his views in a way that younger developers could emulate.

I can't help thinking tons of "rockstar/ninja" developers out there are going to embrace this abrasive style of disagreeing with people and totally rationalize it by thinking well "that's how the guy who wrote Linux does it, so that's how I'm going to do it"

Someone that well respected should (and this is my opinion) never have to reach to the level of addressing someone so far-removed from the heights they've attained, as a 'moron', when simply ignoring them would do. But I'm nobody important, so what the hell do I know about anything ...

Jesus, watching some of the little snowflakes on here whining about how Linus chooses to run his repository is seriously disheartening. When did the the tech community get infiltrated by so many prima donnas and drama queens? If you have a problem with Linus' style or how he chooses to use the tool he made, build an alternative (if you can...) or swap over to a different stack and get on with your life. Stop whining.

I have to agree with Linus on this and it's nice that he's taking time to write out his thoughts in public.

GitHub commit messages can be really ugly. I'm guilty of this and it's not something I'm proud of. I think the small improvement they did a while ago with the display of commit messages is a step in the right direction, I wish they would apply that same style to the web interface when composing commit messages.

edit: A good fix would be a way to turn off pull requests for projects or at least redirect users on how to send pull requests.

Maybe github can make it easier to send messages in reply to a pull request, or even show an email field there. Having people type out their email into the pull request is not the best way to handle that on the web interface I don't think (although practically speaking if you want to use email it is perfectly reasonable to make that a rule for your project until there is a feature like that for git and github). Ideally git itself could make it convenient to view that as a separate field with the pull request.

I am also pissed when someone ignores a feature I have written and redoes something without good reason.

Torvalds probably doesn't have time to handle a whole bunch of git pull requests, and most of them from github probably have problems or aren't important so this rule probably helps him a lot, practically speaking.

But obviously the people at github should really carefully analyze what he is requesting and if possible this could result in some minor improvements in that part of the github interface or git or both.

I don't know much about the Linux kernel, but I don't think that this type of driver information should be in such a centralized place and controlled by an individual or small group of individuals.

The one thing I'll have to give credit to Linus for is that even if people continue to post absurd comments after his original lengthy counterpoint, he will delve into a more polite rhetoric and continue to explain his point, over and over. It's quite the opposite, in fact, of many people who write online where typically the end result is simply escalation or continued fervor.

Github should implement a tempting system for commit messages that way every project can enforce there own standars. And those templates should be shareable, like a template repository so new and existing projects can opt to use one of the exciting ones.

As genius as Linus is, the dude needs to take a couple of shots of harden the f*ck up. I'm sick of his school girl rants and complaints. For such a well-known figure head in the open source/computing industry he sure does complain a lot.

I agree with the need to assess one's ability in Fermi-style problem solving, but I find fault with using non-sensical information for the topic. Seriously, golf balls on a bus? Why not ask about a relevant problem to be solved?

For me, an interview is a two-way street, and a company can most certainly put itself out of consideration with these types of questions. The biggest issue I find with these esoteric-problem-analagous-to-something-relevant types of interview questions is that they usually send a negative signal about the company. I immediately think of gamesmanship, trick questions, watching candidates squirm, or about a dozen other things that I find have nothing to do with the entire reason I might consider joining a company.

While the interviewer's intentions sound very noble, I find the means to the end more risky than useful.

A bigger problem I have with these problems is that I do not feel motivated to solve or even think about such problems. My internal reaction therefore always is, why do I care how many golf balls fit, even if I do not say it out loud.

For whatever problem the interviewer poses me, I would like them to supply me the context around that problem so I can see what is the benefit of solving it. Solving it for the sake of the interview is not a valid answer for me.

There are a plenty of important problems to be solved for me to not waste a minute on a useless one.

..and I will no longer be interested in the job if you think answering a question like that is a worthwhile use of my time, or yours.

It's trivially easy to figure out how to calculate a rough number. I'd go so far as to say blatantly obvious. It's also a waste of time to actually do it.

When it comes to the real world, an estimate that rough, based on no actual data (since the actual dimensions of a golf ball or the hypothetical, poorly defined bus are not available), is not something I'm ever comfortable acting on. In reality, you can always come up with better data than that.

I don't have a single clue how many fashion items are on sale at a given time, not because I'm incapable of estimating it (even though I've never heard of Fermi problems before), but simply because I have no field knowledge about online store business.

Give me a day to think/research if you really want to make sure I'm the right guy for the job, because in the real life, I have the luxury of not being forced to come up with an answer in 3 minutes in a job interview (that would very well change the course of my life).

With all respect, I think all your questions are irrelevant and are definitely not a good metrics for hiring/filtering out candidates. For all means ask them about clustered/non-clustered (to use MSSQL's terminology) indices or stuff like that, but don't put them in a position like this one (they don't know the answer, but given a few days they can give you a pretty accurate estimation).

The problem is, talented people (some of them, not all of them) are not interested in ridiculous problems like this. It comes off as making the applicant jump through a hoop and watching them squirm for your own amusement, rather than as anything productive. No-one's interested in golf balls on buses, because filling buses with golf balls is a waste of time. Talking about it seems a waste of time.

And the question is stupid. Buses are different sizes and of different designs, you know. We have double-decker buses in the UK.

If you must use this class of problem, at least make it more related to your field or narrow down the kind of bus and what furniture is on it. And explain to the applicant why you would ask a question like this. "We want to see how you think" isn't an adequate explanation.

I always assume the reason that you ask these questions is because you don't have anything interesting to talk about in the interview.

Interviews are as much a chance for a candidate to disqualify the interviewer/company because they asked stupid questions, as they are for the interviewer to ask stupid questions.

You got me all the way out here, spending my valuable time talking to you, and all you can come up with is a lame question about golf balls? Sell your company to me. Show me that you are excited about what you are doing. Talk to me about what problems you've been solving lately and try to see how I would go through the process of solving those problems. Sure there are NDAs and you don't want to violate that, but programming problems are programming problems, and if I am spending my time talking to you you can do me the favor of talking generally about what you are doing and making it interesting for me.

I often do ask at least one of these questions on an interview. I don't do it because I care about a precise answer or whether you know the exact dimensions of a golf ball. I care simply because if you can't do Fermi calculations, you can't make long term architectural decisions. You'll build a system which handles 2x today's load very nicely and which I need to replace in 2-3 years, or you might overarchitect a system which can handle 1000x more load than I'll ever need.

...why not just ask a question about building a real-time monitoring system itself and judge the responses there?

i would never pass this test. i would solve this problem using variables for dimensions of the bus and a constant "packing factor" (or assume the optimal cannonball packing and approximate the golf balls as spheres) and write an express formula for the solution. then i would substitute in various constants for the dimensions and adjust the packing factor to find a range of solutions.

the problem with the question is they want an intuitive solution. giving them this formula and evaluating for a range of variables would just piss them off, but it's the best way to approximate the answer of something that poorly defined.

This is dumb for one simple reason, It divides candidates based on an arbitrary line that has only limited correlation to the desired split: Those who fit your job requirements vs. those who do not. Instead, ask them to solve a pertinent problem to your company. If they go down the wrong path, give them a hint as to the right track and see how well they can grasp the new method. Simple. OR even better ask the candidate to explain how they solved their own last 'interesting' problem.

A link, or links much like this describing the "grammar" of Vim, gets reposted every few months, which is probably fine because it's a good thing to learn and share, but it would be nice if there were a HN "Hall of Fame" which would prevent reposting things like this over and over and over again. It could have either posts, or "concepts" with some of the more popular posts about Vi/Vim/etc, Emacs, C++, etc.

I have been using Vim for a few years. I recently installed a trial version of ViEmu plugin for Visual Studio. With Vim inside my main IDE at work, I have the chance to really master it. But I ran into an unexpected hiccup - nobody else can use it when we're collaborating on code! Sadly, I think this might be a big enough reason to remove it.

Most of what he says is obvious stuff and the emphasis he puts on how much he modifies stuff makes me assume he's someone that just runs programs and doesn't have any unique insight, but he does make one interesting point:

> Try to use "Verified-By-Visa" and "Mastercard-Securecode" as rarely as possible. If only your CVV2 code is getting sniffed, you are not liable for any damage, because the code is physicly printed and could have been stolen while you payed with your card at a store. Same applies if someone cloned your CC reading the magnetic stripe or sniffing RFID. Only losing your VBV or MCSC password can cause serious trouble.

Does anyone know if this (using verified-by-visa, mastercard-securecode remove any payment protection if you get key-logged etc) is correct?

I very much enjoyed the reading of his comments - I pulled a few of his that others may find interesting.

[polymorphism code - to hide virus signature]

Randomness is your friend, make your own crypter and make it so fucking random on every compile, that AV reverse engineers kill themselfs (HINT: randomize the crypters sourcecode using perl scripts)

[polymorphism code - to hide virus signature]

I started coding about a year ago, hacking old malware sourcecodes and reading russian boards. Most botnet operators are dumb as fuck, who don't even care about their traces, the ones you see on TV, catched by Microsoft and Brian Krebs. If you have more knowledge you can automatize nearly everything, like creating scripts that rewrite your sourcecode for your crypters so your malware gets undetected again, saving you hard work.

[finding infections on a computer]

Use GMER (http://www.gmer.net/) every now and then when your spider sense is tingling. Srsly, you can't fool GMER, it scans from the deepest possible point in your system, at ring0 and is impossible to fool, there is nothing deeper than ring0 on a usual PC where malware can hide stuff from. I always wondered why other AV vendors don't do it like GMER, it can detect all rootkits. But when a AV can detect everything, who will pay 30$ a year for signature updates...

"Protip against driveby infections (the ones in the browsers): Disable addons in your browser and only activate the ones you need. Chromium and Chrome for example let you disable all additional content like flash, html5, pdf and java in the options, you will see a grey box instead of the content and can manually run it using right-click -> Run. Chrome options -> Content options -> Plug-Ins -> Disable all or Click-to-play. Chrome also allows you to whitelist sites you trust, like youtube. This will make you immune to driveby infections regardless of the version of your java or adobe reader, because you will only be able to click and run content, that is VISIBLE on the site. Malicious content is ALWAYS hidden in a 0pixel iframe! This also stops the nasty flash advertisements implying you can't aim precise enough to win an iPad3."

This is one thing I've been trying to convince people to do for ages but, for some reason, that one extra click turns so many people off. The extra minute or two I probably spend a day clicking on plugins to activate them will pale in comparison to how much time I'll have to spend recovering from being infected.

I don't understand how these people sleep at night. The whole notion I didn't make the game I just play the ball is just hilarious.

Furthermore those guys don't understand that eventually they're hurting the web. All that will bring stricter legislation and governments will start enforcing rules like IP identification for just about anyone out there.

I can understand organized crime exploiting the cyberspace. But for individuals its just plain stupid.

Great post. I forwarded it on to my family and friends in order to give them some awareness of the people who're looking at them from the other side of the internet. Rather than sending more strident "think before clicking" warnings, this post is a great way to get them to think like an attacker so that they can avoid the attacks better.

Now, what has to be done not to get hacked ends up being answered as; AVs won't help, macs won't help, linux won't help, and use ipad? are we heading towards a world where average users will end up in managed computing behind walls, and only some hackers and crackers will use open computing? is computing doomed to be a the black and white world of tyrannic rule vs. mob rule?

There's so many legal ways this guy could make just as much money with his skills. I never understood why someone is willing to put his freedom at risk when that is the case.

I guess he's just lazy or thinks he's incapable of making as much as easily legally, maybe he likes the thrill and challenge of it all, maybe he thinks he's invincible and there's zero chance of him getting caught. Either way he's very foolish for continuing to do this especially if he has no endgame in sight.

The fact that this guy even posted an AMA shows that it's either entirely fake (doesn't seem it), or he's way too cocky. I suspect some trouble may be coming his way soon. He seems to think that he's infallible and that he won't catch a charge for running a botnet.

The thing that's scary is how easy it is for these people to get away with what they're doing. I wonder how much money is lost every year and how many hackers you never hear about going to jail for this stuff. I'm pretty sure this is the motivation to do a lot of this stuff. The risk/reward level is completely slanted.

I see a LOT of stories on HN and other Tech sites about these kinds of attacks. Unfortunately, I rarely, if ever, hear about hackers getting arrested for this sort of activity.

I'm against this. They are trying to impose rules (threading concepts) into the C++ language where it ought not to be. Threads are platform specific (ARM, Intel) albeit with the same idea but underpinnings are different. They are arguing about thread local variables and concurrency issues in the context of the C++ language or standard libraries when really these things are dependent upon the application being written. We don't need all this garbage in the language and there are plenty of class libraries out there to deal with common hardware platforms already that do quite well. Trying to drive a design pattern from high atop ivory towers is stupid and you would think these people would have learned this by now.

I have two problems with this. First, it is a severe safety issue for power company linemen if your local power company does not know about your system and know where the external shutoff switch is. Second, we installed a solar system last year and the installation (physical panel installation and electronics, with interactions with the local power company) as only about 13% of the bill ($1800/$13600).

This price would have sounded great a few years ago, but you can get whole house solar installs for ~$4k, enough to replace your power. We got a 4.6 kw system installed on our house for less than $4k out of pocket. Check out SolarCity or any solar company that offers a lease to own program.